How it Happened
by Ukaisha
Summary: Throughout the course of a game of dodgeball, Kyle explains a number of things to Stan, including but not limited to: a contract, a date, a pork sandwich, and a manipulative fatass. Kyman. Oneshot.


A/N: Hi there. I've been writing fanfiction for many years, and I've been a fan of South Park for many years, but before now I've never particularly been inspired to put them together. I don't know where the idea from this story came from, (or why it ended up being this pairing; I'm not really a dedicated shipper of it) but I hope someone finds some enjoyment out of it, and I look forward to feedback if you feel so inclined to give it.

Thank you.

* * *

When the bell tolled throughout the school with a resounding shriek, instantly all lessons were forgotten, all morning grudges were settled, and every child of South Park Elementary began piling into one conglomerate mob out into the playground for recess. Like birds in migration or bees of the same hive, the children in each group seemed to gravitate towards one activity or another without discussing or considering their options. In the case of a certain group of fourth graders, they settled on a basketball court and several pliable rubber kick ball with which to have their fun: dodgeball, the only time they could violently throw something at someone else with the intent of possibly causing injury, and not get in trouble for it.  
Teams were set up and even the girls were in on the game. They occupied a full basketball court; one not actually as big as your standard size court, of course, but it had enough space to fit the two teams on each side. Some were taunted, some smack was spoken, and then the players began falling into place. There was no time to waste; they had a few really good dodgeball players and several fairly bad dodgeball players, and all that meant was that games would go fast, and the faster the game, the more games they could play before recess was over.

Right as the first game was about to start and the star players were lining up, ready to make a mad dash for the ammunition sitting in half-court, Kyle had the misfortune of looking down at his shoes and noticing a rogue lace.  
Assuming someone would hear him, he yelled out, "Hang on a sec!" and bent over to fix it. Perhaps a few people did hear him, but the problem was that no one cared; this was Elementary School dodgeball, after all. Fairness and good sportsmanship were overrated.  
No sooner had Kyle unknotted the laces that someone yelled "GO!" and, naturally, being in a vulnerable position right at the start, he was a prime target. Clyde, on the enemy team, was one of the first to secure a ball, and he wasted no time in taking down the easiest target. At least three other boys made the same judgement call, and while two of them missed (a fact not to be lost later; missing a sitting duck!) one pelted Kyle right in the shoulder, and one grazed the side of his head, enough to nearly knock his cap right off his head.  
Naturally his team rejoiced at having taken control of almost every ball on the field, but Kyle was not even remotely amused, and on top of that, his shoe wasn't even tied yet.  
"That's not fair Clyde!" he yelled. "I asked you guys to wait a sec!"  
"It wasn't just me!" Clyde yelled back defensively. Several others on his team agreed, although none actually came forward. Who wants to claim a missed shot at a target that wasn't even moving?  
"You didn't yell 'Time Out,' Kyle, so that means the game was still on!" Relishing a moment of superiority and fully aware that he would likely be knocked out in the next volley, Butters came to his teammate's defense. Not a particularly good player himself, it was a rare opportunity to be on the greener side of the grass when the first kid was tagged out in dog-eat-dog dodgeball.  
"But you ALL heard me and then you ALL went right for me! That's seriously not cool, dude." Kyle looked around for some kind of support from his own teammates, and unsurprisingly found it from Stan.  
"Look, it wasn't cool, okay? Why don't we just start over real quick. It's just one person."  
"Fine; if you want to call a do-over, then you have to give back all the balls," rebutted Craig. The fact that the enemy currently owned 5 of 6 dodgeballs was not lost on him, and while his team was standing firm that they were in the right getting Kyle out, they were starting to regret having used four dodgeballs to do it.  
The rest of the team murmured amongst themselves. As Stan had said, they were only down one guy, and they currently had a huge advantage controlling most of the balls. They could feed one of their better players a ball at a time to ensure an out each time; they had the potential to get five players out in a row if they played it smart. It didn't seem like a very good trade to get one mediocre player back on the grounds of fairness over possibly getting five enemy players out at once.  
Finally, someone broke the truth to him: "Sorry Kyle," said Token, sounding sincerely apologetic. "But they did tag you out. Is it that big a deal? You'll be back in a few minutes anyway." It was a rare game of dodgeball indeed that lasted for more than ten or fifteen minutes.

Without any additional support from his team, Kyle reluctantly conceded. He shuffled off of the court, hands in pockets, kicking a little stone along as he went. He hated to be a poor sport, but he felt his sulking was completely vindicated: he hadn't deserved to be out first, and he thought fair play overruled a better chance to win. Perhaps he still thought it unfair that he should have to sit out on the first play, but ultimately he had been outvoted, and Token was right; the game couldn't possibly last very long anyway.

In the end, Kyle's team managed to tag out only two of the enemy's girls, who seemed none the worse for the wear and walked off court giggling. Ever the good friend, Stan made several daring attempts to steal a ball and nail Clyde with it, mostly aiming for his face, but he wound up getting himself tagged out. Clyde managed to catch one of Stan's throws, and by the rules of dodgeball, that meant elimination.  
Untroubled, Stan strolled off court, also with his hands nestled in his pockets, and he pulled up right next to Kyle grinning.  
"I tried dude," he said.  
"Thanks," replied Kyle.

They tried for about a minute to watch the game. It was progressively becoming more and more like one of those showdown types that involved everyone holding onto their balls for what seemed like an interminable amount of time while shit-talk was thrown back and forth, and eventually the two boys grew bored. They settled down against the chain-link fence, chatting lightly for a while, until Stan brought up the forbidden topic.  
"You know exactly why they all aimed at you, right?"  
Kyle sighed angrily. "Yeah, I know. That's why it pissed me off so much."  
"If you would just explain what happened, we could all start spreading the truth instead of rumors, you know." His best friend just shrugged noncommittally. It was the forbidden topic for a reason; Kyle was not prone to talking about it. He hadn't been all week. Stan tried another route. "I guess Fatass is out of school today?"  
"Yeah, he's sick."  
"Are you going to go see him later?"  
"Don't do this to me, Stan." A flat warning tone had crawled into Kyle's voice; he was not tolerating any bullshit.  
"I'm not doing anything to you; I'm just talking."  
They were interrupted by a score of cheers; Wendy, in a moment of blazing glory, had leaped in front of a cringing Tweak and caught a speeding ball headed right for his face. And in the rules of dodgeball, that means elimination. Craig sulked off of the court.

"Kyle, you're my best friend. You know I'm not going to judge you."  
"So you're NOT grossed out by the fact that I'm in a relationship with Cartman?"  
"Uh, well, yeah dude. It's Cartman." Kyle aimed a half-hearted punch at his shoulder, and Stan weakly punched back. There was clearly no bad blood between them for the comment. "I'm just being honest with you!" he insisted. "I just want to know what's going on. You don't usually hide things from me."  
Kyle just sighed and fell further against the chain-link fence. The game was at a standstill again, and there was nothing else to talk about. "Well, maybe I don't want to be honest about it."

"Do you still call him that? 'Cartman,' I mean."  
"Only around you guys. I-" Here he cleared his throat and lowered his voice down a few notches so that Stan had to lean in closer to hear. "I call him Eric when we're alone," Kyle finished, as though he were admitting some shameful secret.  
"Jeeze, one week in and you're on a first name basis?" he teased.  
"Stan, are you here to talk to me or make fun of me?"  
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry." He paused for effect. "So does that mean you'll talk to me about it?"  
Kyle seemed to have nothing further to say about it, but then, just as suddenly as the conversation had swung to the topic, he began.

"Last week, Cartman told me he had something to talk about. A business proposition, he said."  
"Business?" Stan raised a brow. "Making a love confession is a business proposition?"  
"Cartman managed to make it into one," replied Kyle with the air of someone who knows very well how ridiculous the whole thing is, and he was already well past the point of exasperation about it. "Naturally I didn't want to have anything to do with him. I still really hated him, you know."  
"Who hated who, fellas?" Butters, finally falling out of the game to a masterful shot by Token, had come to sit by the two.  
"Go away Butters, we're talking," Stan replied sharply, but Kyle corrected him.

"No, it's alright Stan. Sit here, Butters." He vaguely motioned to his left, and then continued. "Cartman said it would be worth my while to-"  
"Oh, you're talking about Eric?" Butters noticeably turned pinker. "Or, wait, do you not call him Eric, Kyle?"  
"Well, yeah I do, but...arg, just sit there and shut up, okay Butters?"  
"Oh, okay." Doing as he was told, Butters quietly sat next to Kyle and folded his hands.  
"Alright, so where was I?"  
"Worth your while," Stan reminded him.  
"Oh, right. Well, he had me meet him at his house. When I got there he seemed to be taking the whole business proposition thing seriously. He was in a suit and tie and everything."  
"Since when does he ever NOT take himself too seriously?" Stan said, rolling his eyes.  
"Yeah, but you won't believe this: after his whole self-important speech, he said, well, guess: what do you think?"  
"Well, I don't have the slightest idea Kyle; I wasn't here for the beginning."  
"Obviously it's his love confession to you, right?"  
"No, it really was a business proposition. He had a contract written up and everything. And the primary objective of the contract was Cartman swearing up and down in legal talk that he would never call me a 'Dirty Jew' or anything derogatory ever again if I did this one thing for him."  
"Oh jeeze...uh, Kyle, you can leave out some of the, er, dirty bits..."  
"Not like THAT, Butters. He said he wanted me to go out to dinner with him."  
"What? That's it?" Stan was incredulous. He knew his friends' hatreds for each other went back a long way; that the esteemed Eric Cartman would give up his favorite past time of bagging on Kyle for being Jewish just for a dinner was almost harder to swallow than the fact that aforementioned long-time hated frienemies were now dating. "There had to be more, right? He was trying to sneak something else in there."  
"No, I checked the contract up and down. I even revised parts of it. I'm not my father's son for nothing, you know. There were three full pages of nothing but names that Cartman was never in any circumstance allowed to call me again. And all I had to do was go out to dinner with him."  
"But WHY?"  
"Why what, guys?" Tweak had managed to get himself eliminated as well, and he came up right as Kyle was finishing explaining the terms of the contract.  
"Why would Eric stop being mean to Kyle just for dinner?" Butters explained. "It's a mystery. Eric's not nice to anyone, so why Kyle?"  
"I was going to get to that." At first Kyle hesitated as Tweak stood expectantly before them, occasionally twitching nervously, but then he sighed. "Okay, fine. You can stay."

"Obviously I wanted to find out his angle. When I couldn't find the angle in the contract, I tried to interrogate him for it. I had no idea what he'd be gaining from this. Maybe he was planning on humiliating me so bad it would haunt me the rest of my life. He amended the contract to prove it wouldn't happen. Maybe he was planning on slipping something in my food that would get me so sick I'd be hospitalized."  
"Oh jeeze, do you think Eric would've done something that serious?" Butters interrupted as he twiddled his fingers nervously.  
"Well, I didn't know," Kyle admitted. "But I had him add to the contract that he wouldn't just the same. This is Cartman, we're talking about; I was sure there was an angle to this scheme somewhere. There always is."  
"But you didn't sign it, did you?" asked Tweak, winking uncontrollably for a few seconds in a manner that was not at all suggestive; rather just a symptom of his usual hyperactivity.  
"Well, I did."  
"WHY would you do that dude?" Stan groaned. "Let me guess: somehow he ended up forcing you to date him through the contract."  
"Who's forcing who to date who through a contract?" Bebe and Nichole had wandered up to the boys, having been eliminated from the game and appearing no worse for the wear over it.  
"Well, Kyle was-"  
"I'm not back-tracking the story every time someone new walks up!" Kyle snapped. "Either just catch up as we go or leave."  
Bebe and Nichole swapped looks of indifference. It clearly wasn't worth the effort tolerating these boys to hear a lousy story, but then Kyle continued: "So after Cartman had the contract signed by a witness-"  
"Ooh Kyle, Cartman is forcing you to date him?" Bebe squealed.  
The four boys collectively hushed her, and the two girls decided it was worth sticking around after all.  
"Anyway, he got it witnessed by two people. I even still have a copy of it just in case. A whole contract focusing exclusively on the fact that for the rest of his life, Eric Cartman will never say another mean or bigoted or racist thing to me ever again. All in exchange for a dinner."  
"It sounds too good to be true," Stan said. "I mean, we've been out to dinner with Cartman loads of times and he's still an asshole to us."  
"I know; and I was still suspicious of him. But that was the only catch as far as I could see: he got to take me out to dinner. It seemed like a fair trade. I could tolerate an asshole's company for an hour or two in exchange for having a little peace for the rest of my life."  
"Were you already suspecting his intentions after..." Nichole trailed off and then shyly finished, "You know," implying the obvious.  
"I'd thought about it, yeah. But I never imagined he had actually meant it. I thought it had been some dumb lie he'd made up just to get me away from you." There was a brief, tense meeting of eyes, and then they glanced away. Kyle sighed.  
"I don't even know how to explain it now. It's so embarrassing."  
"So he DID embarrass you at the restaurant? Or did he-" Stan cut Butters off mid-sentence.  
"No, stupid. Kyle said Cartman amended to the contract that he wasn't allowed to do that."  
"Oh, alright...but then how is it embarrassing Kyle?"

"Well, we put it off for a few days, until a weekend, you know. We went on a Saturday night."  
"Aha, that night you blew me off when I wanted to play the new Gears of War."  
"Yeah, sorry dude. I couldn't tell you why I couldn't come over, obviously. I was going on a date with Cartman."  
"A d-d-date with Cartman?" Having not participated in the dodgeball game to begin with, Jimmy had decided to come by and see what all the fuss was about. It was becoming clear that Kyle was the center of attention for one reason or another. "So it's true that you two are a co-co-couple?"  
"Just listen to the story Jimmy," Nichole said with a hush.  
"Anyway, Cartman chose the restaurant and said he'd be taking care of everything. True to his word, he didn't even crack a Jew joke when he said he'd cover my meal and not to worry about cash. I brought some anyway, just in case, you know."  
"Out of curiosity Kyle, did Eric take you to a place called Bu-Buca de Faggocini?" Jimmy asked.  
"Wait, what? No; why?"  
"Oh, no reason."

"...Well, we went to this steakhouse, but it wasn't one of those really classy upscale fancy ones or anything. It was just a local place. His mother dropped us off, did the whole concerned mom thing, then left."  
"What was he wearing?" asked Bebe. The boys groaned; leave it to a girl to ask about the clothes someone wore to a date! Typical.  
"Actually that's somewhat important," replied Kyle. "He actually dressed nice and he had a boutonniere on his jacket."  
"A boota-what?"asked more than one boy, and a voice behind them revealed the answer.  
"A boutonniere. The flower boys wear on their lapel." Wendy had found herself knocked out of the game too, and she had quietly taken up a spot next to Bebe. "You wear them to dressy events."  
"Lapel?"  
"So anyway, he had a flower on his jacket."  
"Did he give it to you?"  
"Was it a rose?"  
"Do you still have it?"  
"Can I PLEASE stop being interrupted? I'm never going to finish at this rate." There was hushed agreement from the circle. On the court there were still a few odd kids playing a Mexican Standoff game of dodgeball, but they had ceased to become important.  
"Anyway, before we got inside, yeah he gave me the stupid flower. Said it was a token of his appreciation for coming with him. I played the same card he'd been all along and told him this was strictly for business, and I every intention of fulfilling my end of the bargain and then leaving. He said that was fine; that he didn't expect any less of me."

"So we get inside and sit down. It's a little busy so we end up sitting and talking for a long time before actually getting served. There was this guy belting out the most annoying, grinding, whining country songs you ever heard, so it was kind of hard to NOT talk to someone to at least try to distract yourself from it. Even still, we didn't talk about much, mostly because I was determined to see this through, get it over with, and move on with my life. He told me it wouldn't kill me to at least pretend to enjoy myself, and I told him that me having a nice time wasn't in the contract. He concurred that it wasn't and he wouldn't force me to have a nice time if I didn't want to, then we finally got our food. I'd just gotten a cheeseburger and fries and he'd gotten a barbeque pork sandwich."  
A few more kids had filled in the circle at the edges, but at the hushed warnings of the others, they didn't interrupt Kyle, and Kyle pretended not to notice them. Stan was clearly the only person he was talking to; the rest were simply supplementary.  
"Eventually I did stop being so defensive and I loosened up. I decided that if Cartman was willing to never call me derogatory names again that I could at least PRETEND to be civil to him, even if it still made me physically ill being in the same room as him. Some things about him I think he does subconsciously; you know he showed up with his hair parted the same as Hitler? And the fatass probably didn't even realize it. He'd just done it."  
"He probably did it on purpose," Stan said honestly. "I'm still not convinced that he didn't try to pull something."  
"Well, this is why I think that. When I finally started to converse with him normally and we were just eating, I kept saying how much I really liked the burger. It was a legit burger, by the way; we have to go some time, Stan. He said if I liked the burger I should try his sandwich; the place was famous for its barbeque sauce and its pork sandwich in particular was what was giving it a name for itself. He said it was making Denver newspapers."  
"Naturally I told him I didn't want to try it. Again he told me that it wouldn't kill me to enjoy myself and he offered half of the sandwich to me. And you know how Cartman sounds when he's mocking other people; he was doing this really sincerely. He really didn't realize what the problem was; he thought I was just being stubborn."  
"OH! I get it," Butters said suddenly and loudly, and the whole group, including Kyle, stopped and looked at him. "Oh, er...it's because it was pork. Jews don't eat pork, right?" This had actually been a point lost upon most of the group, and they all made noises of revelation too.  
"Oooh," said Nichole. "I'm sorry; I forgot you were Jewish, Kyle."  
"It's not like I'm a hardcore, stuck-up Jew or anything, okay?" Kyle said defensively. "I just don't eat pork because I don't really like it. I've had it before, it just tastes weird."  
"So it takes Cartman a few more attempts of getting me to try the sandwich and by this point I was starting to get frustrated at him again. At the time I thought he was trying to be an asshole and subtly make fun of me. But when he realized what he was doing he just apologized profusely and said he'd completely forgotten. He even called the waiter over and ordered a burger, asking for the pork sandwich to be taken away. I told him I wasn't offended by him eating pork; I just wouldn't eat it. He insisted that it be taken away and he wouldn't stop apologizing. And the weird thing was, as angry as I was at him, I felt like it was really sincere. Like he truly felt sorry for offering me pork knowing I was Jewish and it hadn't been a secret attack. He looked really mad at himself. I kept telling him it was okay and that I didn't care and he just kept saying he was sorry, that he'd ruined it. I still wasn't completely convinced that it hadn't been intentional, but for the time I decided to assume it had been a sorry accident. It was even starting to get humorous how deeply he had taken his mistake to heart. I finally just said, 'Cartman, shut up. If I don't care then why do you care so much?' and he finally stopped talking about it.  
"Eventually he got his replacement burger and we finished eating roughly the same time; I was eating slow and he was eating fast, so there we are. When we didn't have anything else to do we just sat around and talked and drank soda, and then we got the bill. True to his word he covered it, and he even paid for the pork sandwich he'd sent back. That really surprised me because, you know, knowing Cartman I figured he'd say he found a bug in it and he would have somehow suckered the restaurant into giving him desert and a giftcard along with his replacement burger, but he just paid in cash and moved on. I think this more than anything was what made me think he'd been honest and that the pork sandwich thing had just been a momentary lapse of judgment on his part."  
"And the Hitler hair thing?" asked Stan, with a chorus of giggles erupting around them.  
"It's Cartman," sighed Kyle, rolling his eyes. This seemed to more or less answer the question.

"While we were standing outside the restaurant waiting for his mom to pick us up, we didn't really say anything. We had just eaten dinner together for almost two hours and we had nothing to say to each other. But it wasn't our usual silence; you know, his scheming and plotting while I sit there furious at his existence. It was just a sort of comfortable silence, almost. Then he asked if I'd ended up enjoying myself after all. I thought about it and said that yeah, I had. I told him, 'You know Cartman, you really surprised me tonight. I was convinced you had some devious plot set in motion and I was walking right into it.'  
I meant it as a joke, you know, but neither of us laughed really. I think we both knew that it wasn't exactly paranoia. Then he said, 'You can call me Eric, you know.'  
I asked, 'Why would I do that? You've always been Cartman.'  
He said, 'I don't know. I just thought I'd let you know you could. I mean, I'd like it if you did.'

'Well,' I said, 'Too bad that wasn't in the contract.'

"We were both quiet again, awkwardly this time. Now that the possibility of him unleashing some heinous evil scheme on me was becoming less likely, I was starting to think about everything he said a few months ago. You know, during the basketball game. I asked him, 'Cartman, is this about what happened before? With Nichole?'  
He looked kind of surprised and asked, 'What did you think this was about?'  
I sort of didn't know what to say back. He'd never exactly phrased what we were doing as a 'date,' and he never mentioned the incident. Now I was starting to think that this had been the whole point. He had taken the leap of his life a few months ago admitting he loved me in front of hundreds of people, and now he was forever changing his life by swearing he would be nice to me. It all sort of clicked all of a sudden."  
"It took you THAT long?" Wendy felt the need to scold, and she scoffed under her breath, "Boys!"  
"I didn't really know what to do, and Cartman didn't give me any indication that he was expecting anything. He was just sort of standing there calmly, glancing at the street as cars went by and keeping an eye out for his mother.  
"Before, when he'd given me the flower, I'd shoved it in my pocket and made a note to get rid of it when I had a chance. But now I took it back out and sort of awkwardly gave it back to him. I didn't really know what to say, I told him I'd had a nice time. I meant it like, 'So this was nice, see you around,' That's what I meant, anyway, and that's why I was giving him back the flower. I was sort of gesturing like, 'Look, I don't want this, so take it back, okay?' but I guess it didn't come out that way. He took the flower, sort of stared at it for a second, then grabbed my wrist, pulled me closer and, well, he kissed me."  
Shrieks and cries of disgust erupted from the group as the climax was finally revealed and all of them were faced with the task of imagining a passionate kiss between the vile Eric Cartman and the mild Kyle Broflovski. Females were gushing about its cuteness; boys were gagging at its revoltingness.  
"Did you puke?" asked Craig, who had at some point migrated to the ring of spectators.  
"No, I didn't puke."  
"Did you punch him?" asked Clyde, who had either at some point been knocked out of the game or had ended up its winner; there were no longer any kids playing on the court.  
"No, I didn't punch him."

Other questions were being presented, but Stan made his the most pressing: "Well, then what the hell did you do, Kyle?"  
"Well, I kissed him back."  
It was the first reaction all over again. Fake retching noises were heard; girlish giggles swept through the crowd. The insidiously gay love plot! It was all coming to light now!

"I didn't know how to react, okay? I didn't really have any feelings for him. I just reciprocated."  
"I can't believe you didn't just vomit on the spot," said Stan, the only one whose opinions Kyle was listening to at the moment. "I thought you hated him."

"Well, I don't know. He'd made himself seem more human throughout the night. And when he asked me to call him Eric, I told him I wouldn't and it wasn't part of the contract, but, well, I started thinking about him as Eric. He'd split from being psychotic asshole Cartman to sweet and thoughtful Eric. And you know what? That had probably been his plan all along, the manipulative bastard. He knew if he'd asked for me to date him or something I would say no, because he knew I hated him and that was no secret. But if I gave him a chance for us to just talk and get to know each other, I wouldn't hate him so much. He really is smart, you know."  
"Kyle and Eric, sittin' in a tree," Bertha the red-head began, and the rest of the girls picked up with: "K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" They may have continued onto other verses, but Kyle threw them a dirty look, and they stopped.  
"Anyway, afterward we were both just struck dumb by indecision about what had just happened and we didn't speak to one another. His mom came and picked us up and tried to engage us in polite conversation. Eric, well...Cartman managed to keep the talk going, but you could see his mind wasn't really on it. He even messed up and said I'd eaten the pork sandwich and he'd had a burger." Kyle chuckled. "His mom didn't catch on though, she just gave him a lot of 'that's nice, sweetie' and offered to drop me off before driving home. Cartman insisted on walking me to my door and his mom told him not to take very long.  
"We didn't say anything on the walk up there, and then we just stood there. I put my hand on the doorknob and said, 'Well, see you,' but he put a hand on my shoulder. He said, 'I love you, Kyle.' And I just told him, 'I don't love you, Cartman.'"  
"That's IT?" Butters said in an outrage. "You left him like THAT?"  
"No, that's not it yet." Kyle finally took the time to look around the group. Every single kid in Mr. Garrison's fourth grade class was there; even Timmy was sitting quietly in the back. He seemed to intentionally catch the eyes of every kid surrounding him, and he said, "You know what they'll all say," and it took his listeners a moment to realize that he was reciting dialogue, not talking directly to them.

"I don't really care,' he said frankly. 'Those guys don't mean anything to me. You do.'  
'Can you just tell me why?' It had been eating away at me since I'd realized that this had been his intention all along. Not embarrassing me or giving me food poison; he'd just been trying to get me to go on a date with him so maybe he could explain how he felt. Maybe get me to understand that he'd meant every word he said during that basketball game, even if at the time I'd been too furious with him to realize it.  
"I knew he'd already said everything he could have possibly said, and yet I still didn't understand. Didn't he hate me? Didn't he take countless hours out of his day to torment me? Hadn't he used most of his vocabulary for years for the soul purpose of belittling me? Wasn't I just some 'dirty fucking Jew' to him?

'Why what?' was his answer. 'Why I love you?' I nodded, and he said, 'Haven't I always?'  
I still didn't know what to say or how to act. All I knew at that moment was that I did not love Cartman, and I repeated this fact again. He nodded, like he understood. Then I opened the door and said, 'Goodnight, Eric.' And you should have seen the look on his face. He beamed. I almost did a double-take to see if a pile of chocolate covered treasured had suddenly appeared behind me. Then he just said, 'Goodnight, Kyle.' And he left. "  
Kyle was silent for several long, drawn-out seconds, and it was obvious that the telling of the story was done.  
"But wait, Kyle, that can't be it!" insisted Butters. "You never really cleared up anything. So are you dating Eric or not?"  
"Well, Stan just asked me what had happened, so I was just explaining how it happened," said Kyle. But then he added, "But yeah, one thing led to another and now we're dating."  
The circle had become silent. The truth had been delivered so quick and fast at the end without any of the anticipated build-up after the suspenseful story that it almost seemed like an add-on, like a post-it note at the bottom of a paper that someone had forgotten to write in. Like it was simply unimportant. "One thing led to another" was a lot of things that were being left out! No one knew what to say to Kyle; even Stan was at a loss.

Finally, someone broke the silence. It was muffled and hard to hear, and no one caught the words clearly at first.

When no one came forward, Kyle asked "What was that?" and then he realized it was Kenny, who was pulling his scarf and hoodie away from his face enough to be heard properly. His question in response to the whole story was simply this:  
"So have you guys fucked yet?"  
And despite everything, Kyle practically screamed back horrifically,"Are you NUTS, dude? That's gross! Why would we do THAT?"  
Kenny shrugged. Disappointment was evident on his face.

When it was clear that Kyle had nothing else to add to this unsatisfying ending, the crowd began to disperse, and rampant chattering began the second the kids had split off into groups of twos and threes. Those that had missed the earlier part of the story were getting the pieces filled in by those that had been there prior, and theories were being thrown back and forth like a flaming baseball that burned hotter and hotter the more they touched it.

"Well, that'll keep them settled for a while," was Stan's assessment of the whole thing.  
"Do you think I should have let so many of them know?" Kyle asked. Still he could feel the glances and shifty eyes catching him in the distance, and it made him feel strange and alone. Even Stan's presence didn't help much.  
Nonetheless, Stan replied, "It's better this way. They would have found out one way or another, and it's better than some of the other rumors that were going around."  
"I didn't mean for it to happen, Stan. I really didn't. I never thought it ever COULD happen."  
"I know, dude."  
"I mean, until a week ago I completely identified as straight. I'm still sort of in shock."  
"I know, dude."  
There wasn't much else for the two best friends to say. Kyle had talked his way through most of recess, and the rest of his class seemed far too occupied to start up another dodgeball game.  
"I think I like him, you know," Kyle finally concluded.  
"You're dating someone and you don't even know if you like them? Pretty weak, dude."  
"You know what I mean." Stan just sighed in response and got to his feet. He stretched a bit while Kyle followed his lead and also stood up, hands shoved deeply in pockets. "Do you think they're going to make fun of us?" he asked quietly.  
"Oh, for sure," Stan replied. "Mercilessly. Especially Fatass."  
"Really helpful," Kyle muttered under his breath.  
"I never said I would, though." And at a point when anyone even remotely associated with Kyle would likely be considered gay, Stan nevertheless put his arm around Kyle's shoulders and gave him an encouraging smile that Kyle soon returned. You had to hand it to Stan Marsh; he was the best friend you could ask for. "Me and Kenny and Butters and a few of the others will be just fine with it. Hell; Kenny's only interest in the whole thing was whether or not you two had fucked yet." They both chuckled, but then Kyle said seriously:  
"We're not doing that, by the way." Stan carelessly said, "Sure, sure," and Kyle pressed it. "I'm serious, dude. It's not happening."

"As long as you and Cartman aren't digustingly lovey-dovey in public, I don't really care either way. I can only stomach so much romance to begin with; having to constantly watch you and Cartman would be too much."

The bell rang to signal the end of a long and complicated recess. Kyle had enough time to say, "Thanks, Stan," before they both ended up herding back into the school with the rest of the kids. Now, rather than a flock of birds in the heat of migration, they were a bit more like a multitude of slugs moving dully towards the same water source. In no particular hurry and with no particular interest. It was just something that had to be done. Mr. Garrison's fourth grade class had a lot more to think and talk about than school at the moment, anyway.

Perhaps Kyle had made a mistake in telling everyone how it happened, but he felt oddly at ease for it. There was something to be said for making a confession, especially if it was something that had so drastically changed your life like dating Eric Cartman when your name was Kyle Broflovski.  
Agreeing to date Eric had felt sickeningly right, and like a sickness it had slowly been eating away at him from the inside. Part of him said there was nothing wrong; part of him was terrified at this, devastating reality. Now that everything was on the table; no more secrets; he felt free and invigorated. He still had his best friend, and some others too, come to think of it. And he still had Eric, and that was what mattered most.  
Eric liked him, and as it happened, he liked Eric back. And for now, that was enough.


End file.
